The present invention relates to repeating firearms, and particularly to a repeating firearm using a replaceable magazine.
In land warfare the individual infantry soldier is still an important part of military operations. The effectiveness of the individual soldier depends to a large extent on the accuracy, rate of fire, and number of rounds of ammunition which each individual soldier is capable of providing. For that reason, modern infantry firearms are capable of high cyclic rates of fire and are usually equipped with replaceable magazines capable of holding dozens of cartridges. Such magazines must usually be manually released from the firearm when they have become empty, at which time a full magazine must be inserted into the firearm before firing may be continued. In order to be capable of sustained firing an infantry soldier carries loaded spare magazines, typically held in protective pouches attached to ammunition belts. When actually engaged in combat it is common for soldiers to carry spare loaded magazines more immediately ready for use, since removal of a loaded magazine from a cartridge belt may take an undesirably long time.
In order to provide an ability to fire more rounds quickly, spare magazine carriers as disclosed in Johnson U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,484,404 and 5,636,465, of which the disclosures are hereby incorporated herein by reference, allow a spare magazine to be carried alongside the receiver of a rifle, ready for immediate use. However, the device disclosed in the mentioned Johnson U.S. patents may limit access to a functional operating lever or button located on the receiver of certain rifles. In particular, the spare magazine carrier shown in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,484,404 is located close to one part of a bolt catch operating lever on certain auto-loading rifles such as M-16 military rifles and Colt® AR15 rifles. This closeness to the bolt catch operating lever requires use of a certain amount of a soldier's attention to push the bolt catch operating lever to release the bolt and chamber a round from a newly inserted magazine in such a rifle. With the spare magazine carrier in place, the rifleman must exercise additional care and use a finger or the thumb to locate and definitely push the upper end of the bolt catch operating lever toward the receiver to release the bolt. While the time involved in doing so may be well less than a second, the action may require the rifleman to look at the bolt catch operating lever at a critical time, thus dangerously distracting his attention. Releasing the bolt of such a firearm upon replacing the magazine thus may require a critically important additional amount of time during combat. It is therefore desired to provide a way to improve the speed and efficiency of reloading and resuming operation of the firearm with which a spare magazine carrier is associated, without detracting from any other aspects of the firearm.
What is needed, then is a device which can be readily installed to facilitate operation of an operating control device such as a bolt catch operating lever and which fits in the available space adjacent the weapon when an accessory such as a spare magazine carrier is installed.